For reasons more cultural and feministic than personal, I have never read Playboy Magazine. But I veer towards agreement with Hugh Hefner’s perspective when it comes to sex relative to, well, the rest of the Universe.

And, at age 84, he still considers himself the luckiest man on the planet who played some part in changing the world. I think he’s right. From an interview in this month’s Vanity Fair with John Heilpern, Mr. Hefner points out that, “…when you no longer have passion, it’s the beginning of the end.”

More from the interview:

“I saw the hypocrisy in the notion that obscenity could somehow be connected to sex instead of to war and bigotry. I believed that sex, when properly understood, could be the best of who we are. It doesn’t mean that it can’t be exploited or abused. It can be. But sex itself is the fire around which we warm ourselves. It is the heart of civilization and the family.”